


i want to get better

by SilverSpiderArt



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Death, Corporate Espionage, Disabled Character, Family Dynamics, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Not Beta Read, Secrets, Trans Male Character, fantasy modern ish with borderlands tech and animals
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-11
Updated: 2017-09-11
Packaged: 2018-12-26 11:48:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12058380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverSpiderArt/pseuds/SilverSpiderArt
Summary: Timothy Lawrence just wants to lead a simple life. To finally finish his book and spend quality time with his cats. Maybe get to know the cute guy that he sees every morning at the cafe. But life is never simple when you are Handsome Jack's twin. Especially not when the shadows of his past still haunt him.He might not end up with what he wants, but as his world gets slowly turned upside down, he might finally get what he needs.





	i want to get better

**Author's Note:**

> So this is my first entry into Borderlands and of course, I just had to latch onto a long ass plot idea. Heres hoping I can see it through to the end. I can't promise any sort of update schedule but I really love this story and have all the basics plotted out. 
> 
> Also the world I'm building will follow elements of canon but the setting is single planet and the tech a mix of modern and game canon.

The cup of coffee at Timothy’s elbow was slowly getting colder as he typed away. Absently he sipped at it, the sweetness of it now syrupy and stagnant, beginning to congeal. His brows knit and he wrinkled his nose at the taste. His eyes briefly flitted over to the counter of the cafe, Springs’ Coffee N Stuff, where the barista lazily chatted away with one of the other regulars. He could go get a fresh cup but he really should at least try and keep to a minimum. His waistline was already getting soft enough from spending more of his days curled on this bench with his laptop than on his feet. His gut was going to get as soft as Jack’s if he kept up like this.

Well, no. That was a lie. Tim would have to increase his sugar intake seven fold and stop going to the gym at all to even start to catch up with his twin brother’s creeping gut. Not that anyone outside their small group of old friends would know, not with all the bulky layers and body shapers his vain brother wore.

Huffing Tim drew his hands through his unruly locks, tugging the graying streak back behind his ear from where it always ended up. The curls refusing to stay in the loose ponytail. It was the fault of genetics and not the way his calloused hands endlessly tugged through the strands as the words once again eluded him. His fingers returned to the keys but his mind wandered.

*

The Lawrence Twins. That simple phrase had once struck fear throughout the neighborhood they grew up in. Every kid on the block knew their face, or at least Jack’s face and since Tim had Jack’s face he was just as notorious. It was a rare day that they weren’t together in public as they stalked the alleys between run down houses and corner stores. Jack would say they were out to cause trouble and remind all the other kids who was the boss ‘round here. He’d always start a fight before they went home. Always make sure that they went home with full bellies and bloody knuckles whenever possible.

Tim knew they were out because it was better than being home. That if they didn’t find a bag of chips or a candy bar then there was a chance they might not eat at all that night.

Depending on how she… on if they… on how quiet… on bad luck and chance. He could at least be truthful with himself on that now even if he still could barely stand to think back. In the end, they hadn’t mattered. It was all at the whim of **her**.

Tim didn’t remember their mother. Jack claimed to but Tim was sure he’d pulled her description from a movie rather than memory. They knew their father was dead. That knowledge was burned into their brain through repetition. Their mother was a ghost. There weren’t any pictures. It was more that she was a void. Her presence felt in every wall of their childhood home but never seen or spoke of. If they even tried to ask they would immediately be made to regret it. Same if they tried to enter grandfather’s tomb of a study. These were lessons they learned early.

The bed they slept in had once been their mother’s. A small thing that could barely hold two growing boys. When they fought it was a wrestling match and bloodied lips that always ended with Tim sleeping on the floor. Jack’s pillow getting chucked at his face to “shut him up” half way through the night. When they got along, they curled around each other for comfort and warmth. Tim against the wall, his arms wrapped around Jack’s bony frame.

Jack would always claim it was his sacrifice, playing his brother’s hero as he faced the door. As they lay awake on the bad nights watching the shadows under the door, listening to the creak of footsteps and muttered curses. Listening for if the TV turned off. Their breath held. Jack would say that it was so that if it came, he’d take the bruises to spare Timmy. Soft sweet Timmy. Tim would never mention how Jack’s night terrors rarely made an appearance when they shared the bed. How Jack would shake after the beatings and press his face into Tim’s chest as they both cried as quiet as they could. And they learned to cry very quietly. To let the tears flow without a whimper.

So they stayed out of the house as often as they could. Roaming the streets in dirty sweaters and with cocky swaggers. Or Jack did. Tim was just a shadow at his back. Jack would boast and posture. When the fight broke out, with gritted teeth, Tim would join the fray and make sure Jack had enough sense left in his head for them to stagger home.

As they got older Jack only grew more restless and rebellious.

Tim just wanted to escape into the few cherished books he’d hoarded.

*

What was left of his coffee was ice cold and Tim had barely added a paragraph to his ‘masterpiece’. He was desperately refusing the urge to scrape the current iteration and start over. He’d written more chapter 1’s then he had chapter 20’s. He scrubbed over his face, glasses pushed up on his forehead. Another weary sigh left him as he pushed out of his seat and stretched, grimacing at the series of pops from his spine. He was getting old. Too old. As much fun as it was to tease Jack for being an old man with his dad sneakers and frayed sweaters… Tim was just as old even if he stayed in better shape. But his age was still showing. His body gaining in its protests over a reckless youth.

Taking up his cup he made his way back to the counter of the small cafe, Janey gave him a cheery smile as she went about refreshing his cup. A fond grin played on his lips even though he mostly tuned out her chatter about the other customers she’d served earlier. The shop was small and warm if eccentrically decorated. It was rarely packed but business was steady enough that Janey never seemed worried. For his part, Tim was happy for that. The quiet place was far better to write in than the fancier chain shops around the city, plus since Janey opened the place it meant he got to patron an old friend and it was a good excuse to see more of her and Athena.

He knew he was horribly antisocial. Always more content to spend his day lost to the world of his imagination and in his books and games than in reality. But he did miss his friends. This had been the best compromise he’d come up with yet. And it gave Janey plenty of opportunities to harass him into joining them on outings and had even convinced him to join their new Bunkers and Badasses group. Tim had been leery when he found out the GM was barely 16 but Tina had turned out to be hilarious and he’d yet to regret the monthly game nights.

With a fresh steaming cup of motivation in hand, Tim returned to the dreaded document. The novel waiting to exist. Settling in his seat he opened his blog instead. The words came easier there even if he secretly wished no one would ever read them. Each time he got comments he was hit with a horrible mix of exhilaration and dread. His writing was horrible. It always had been.

He wrote anyway. Fingers easing over the keys as he let the steam of consciousness flow. Just letting himself be a strange nerd on the internet giving book reviews and a growing number of recipe ideas under the subcategory ‘How to Feed a Bachelor’. And lots of pictures of his cats. Those always got the most hits and were the only comments he eagerly read. He grinned fondly as one of his regulars gave fond praise of the latest picture of ‘That Fucking Bastard’, or TB for short, sprawled out rudely taking over the sink last night and refusing to let Tim brush his teeth like a normal person who didn’t have to spend an hour fighting his cat for water.

Once again ‘MyCharmingSocks’ told Tim how a little gray cat that cute shouldn’t have that horrible of a name. Chuckling to himself Tim replied, [Trust me TB is better than my brother’s name for him.]

He bit his lip, staring at the other open tab, grin flagging. Shoulders slumping he reopened his novel. Bears. He was supposed to be writing about epic bear drama not about how cute his cats were.

*

Things had changed when they started school.

Jack was as confident and brilliant as he was a rebellious asshole. He flirted shamelessly and swaggered through the halls of their school. Tim just tried to disappear. Jack was everything he wasn’t. Stronger, faster, smarter, charming and effortless in his look. Jack made their face look good, something people seemed to drool over. When Tim looked in the mirror he just saw a nerd whose chin was too big for his freckled face. Whose hair always fell in his eyes and who needed glasses to read. Jack did too, only he never wore them. He just didn’t do his reading. At least not at school. On Jack the mismatched eyes were exotic. On Tim, they were unwanted attention. He hunched his shoulders and tried not to be noticed. If anyone did manage to see him, they nearly always called him ‘not Jack’ or ‘the other one’.

It was a tight hot coil in his stomach as he watched Jack move so effortlessly around. Like acid eating his insides. They fought more than not those days. Until the day Jack skipped school to hang out with his girlfriend with a “just cover for me” thrown at Tim.

He wasn’t sure why he agreed. His glasses tucked in his pocket. Wearing Jack’s stupid sweater. His hair jelled back out of his eyes. He threw his shoulders back even as his heart beat out of control. His swagger had more abrupt starts and jumps. His boasting jilted and stuttering. One of Jack’s friends asked if he’d taken something and if he’d share. They laughed. But no one thought he was Timothy. They kept calling him Jack. They kept looking at him, hanging around him, touching him. As if his charm would rub off on them.

The charm he didn’t have. Because he wasn’t Jack.

Just a nervous wreck.

But that had been the start of it all. The start of Handsome Jack. More legend than man. Fitting as it had taken two men to play him. At least in the beginning.

They started manipulating their schedules after that. Jack did their math and science homework, Tim did the reading and writing. He wrote the essays that got them into college. That got them far far away from their childhood home. They entered the same college, it was too expensive but it was the best programming college they could get into. The writing program was crap, but Tim didn’t mind. It was fine. Tim wrote his own papers and most of Jack’s too. Jack got Tim through the few math classes he was required to take. Jack excelled with ease, getting scholarships and even an internship before they’d even graduated.

Tim just stared at his empty notebooks. The blank pages haunting him. But it was fine. Jack was making good money and Tim was just his shadow after all. He didn’t need much to be happy. Just his books. So it didn’t matter.

They moved far away from everything they had known before. Jack even convinced HR to give Tim a job in marketing. Some low-level thing that mostly meant he edited copy and filed paperwork. Just so that he was nearby. In the building, if Jack needed him. He needed him less and less lately. But it was money. Money that was needed at his student loans became crippling. Jack’s income steadily increased as he quickly rose through the ranks, genius that he was, his debt minimal. Tim had taken loans. Too many loans. He started twitching whenever his ECHO rang. Dreading the reminders of his payments.

Then Jack got a new apartment. And a wife. And a child.

He didn’t need Tim anymore. Didn’t need his shadow at his back. Didn’t need any of Tim’s paltry skills. Leaving Tim… Superfluous.

And he was…

He was fine. He got a cat. He named it Asshole after his brother. He went to a job he hated and made just enough to eat most nights. He stared at his computer as his colleagues made remarks. Looked at him funny. They knew his eyes. His chin. But the set of his lips were wrong. The hunch of his shoulders didn’t match. Everyone knew Jack the young Head of Programming but no one knew Tim the nothing from Marketing.

Tim hated Hyperion all the more for that. The whispering and rumors.

He wasn’t even sure what had set him off. Tim didn’t do angry. He didn’t snap. That was a Jack thing. But that day he did. He’d punched a wall. His knuckles throbbed in a way they hadn’t since he was a boy. The room went silent around him and for a heartbeat, he panicked.

But… Jack… Jack would never get called out for something like that, would he? Even if they whispered, Jack wouldn’t care.

Tim laughed, a mad sound that rumbled out of his chest, a shock even to himself. His glasses disappeared, folded into his pocket. His hair swept back. As he straightened, he rose higher than Tim ever did. No hunch, shoulders back, chin up. He scowled, gaze sweeping the room. Everyone stared back. Fear but no judgment.

“The frick you looking at, pumpkin?” he sneered.

His heart was too fast, palms sweating. He snorted at the man who was suddenly back peddling from him. Take up the whole room, he repeated to himself as he swaggered out. It was like riding a bike. A rusty bike with no breaks.

Somehow he found the company gym. As a department head, Jack had a membership but Tim knew he never used it. It was painfully easy to get in under Jack’s name. Everyone knew Jack’s face.

So Tim hit things. Pushed things. Lifted things. And he didn’t have to think. There was no debt, no whispers, no shadows, no nightmares. No empty house with only cats. An apartment Jack wouldn’t even visit anymore because of the cats. Never having forgotten the first cat they’d ever own. Or how they’d lost it. Jack’s expression always too tight when he saw Tim’s cats. Tim just holding the small animal closer. Promising it that it would always be safe.

In the gym, he didn’t have to think about any of that. So he went every day after his shift. Until he couldn’t feel his arms or legs. Until he collapsed back home and just slept. No thoughts. No worries. Read. Work. Gym. Sleep. That was his life for weeks.

Then he got ushered into the gun range. The researcher had kept calling him Jack, having caught him in the hall on the way to the gym. He hadn’t been able to figure out how to talk his way out of following her. She’d brought him before the target dummies. Put some experimental weapon in his hand. It was unfamiliar. The twins had never been a stranger to violence but Tim had never fired a gun. Used to scuffles that ended in bloody lips and bruised knuckles. Maybe a knife if someone was out for real blood.

He wasn’t sure if Jack was supposed to know how to fire a gun but the woman didn’t seem overly bothered as she walked him through it. How to hold it. How to stand. The gun barked in his hand when he finally squeezed the trigger. The sound near deafening with its unexpectedness. Gunsmoke filled his nose. He’d missed the target but he was already lining up another shot. He squeezed the trigger again and again until the clip was empty.

They handed him a new gun. His aim got better.

He wasn’t sure if Jack was supposed to have access to the shooting range but they never seemed to question his near weekly visits. Always handing him a new toy. SMGs and pistols and rifles. A sleek sniper tucked against his shoulder, the advanced hydraulics turing the kick back into a gentle kiss with each shot he fired. Stationary targets slowing growing boring as he peppered the dummies with rounds. The scientists behind him would ramble about what new tech the guns had but Tim knew he didn’t need to listen, Jack wouldn’t have anyway.

Just as the routine was getting old a rough hand belonging to a pair of hard eyes landed on his shoulder. The promising smile had led him out of the gym and into the ring. Underground fighting. Real danger and real credits. Knuckles hit flesh again for the first time since childhood. It felt good. Winning or losing didn’t matter. But he felt a warm curl of pride when he started to win more rounds than he lost. Fists in the air that night he challenged anyone to come at him that thought they could take on ‘Handsome Jack’. With blood in his mouth, he went home with a fat wad of credits stuffed into his sweater pockets.

It had all been going so well… which was of course when Jack finally cornered him.

“The hell you doing TimTams?” Jack boxed him in against the bar, eyes hard, “You trying to ruin my reputation, cupcake?”

Hunched over his beer, Tim just scowled at the amber liquid as if it could answer for him, “’S matter? We always used to.”

Jack’s hands were rough on him, but Tim noticed almost absently that Jack’s hands were much softer than the ones he'd grown used to in the ring. Well… Jack did spend more time behind a desk these days. Still, he manhandled Tim with ease.

His forearm pressed against Tim’s throat, so familiar that Tim barely registered it. Jack kept snarling, “Yeah but this time I didn’t tell you to! If you ruin this job for me…”

The threat hung in the air. Tim could see the strain in Jack’s eyes. The sleepless nights that balancing fatherhood and work had brought. His little niece was as much an Angel as her name implied but raising a baby had proven harder than Jack was willing to admit. Marriage was proving harder than Jack was willing to admit. But Tim knew his brother. He was too stubborn to ever admit he needed help. And Tim hated everything too much to be willing to think on it more than that.

So instead he said, “I thought you wanted to look like a badass, Jack.”

That strange blank look crossed his twin's face. The look of gears turning. And Jack started laughing. The arm at his throat moved to his shoulder as Jack drew Tim close, “You’re a fricking genius, Timmy.”

His grin was infectious. It always was.

That night, as beer and whiskey flowed, they began to recraft Handsome Jack in earnest.

*

Tim pushed his laptop back, rubbing his eyes again. It was supposed to be a hero's journey. Classic. But the sort where it was more personal than epic. The hero might save the day but you had to question if in the end they really were even the good guy or the villain. If anyone could really be the hero at the end of the day. The real story in how they grew and changed as a person. Learned to be a better person despite everything they’d done. Or well… bear. Learned to be a better bear.

But he knew without a doubt that it wasn’t coming across right. He scowled at the screen, brows knit. Maybe he should add a new bear to the questing group… but he’d have to go back to chapter five… and if he did that he might as well delete the whole thing.

His finger hovered over the delete key as he chewed his lip.

The clang of the chime above the coffee shop’s door drew his gaze. **He** walked in. Tim hunched behind his laptop as a shield though his eyes never left the gorgeous stranger.

He always ordered two coffees. His was the less sweet one. Something light and nutty with whip cream. Sometimes with enough extra shots to kill a horse on the days the bags under his eyes showed. Tall and thin with legs that went on forever. He was beyond beautiful and clearly knew it with the way he moved and grinned effortlessly. Flashing a smile that could say so many things.

Tim watched as he chatted with Janey as she mixed his drinks. The light shone off his gleaming prosthetic arm. A high-end cybernetic that matched his fitted snazzy suits. Janey called them adorkable. Tim just thought it was hot. Especially the hint of brightly colored socks that he occasionally caught glimpses of under the man’s dress slacks.

Janey knew his name but Tim refused to ask. If he knew his name then it’d be too real. This horrible crush. As it was, he could just be the handsome stranger that Tim saw nearly every morning.

He opened his blog back up and added a new personal entry:

“How is it that a writer can talk endlessly on the page and fail to speak aloud? I watch the world ebb and flow around me as if I was the stone in a river but the words that I type here won’t change the course of the river around me. For that, I’d have to speak. My brother speaks endlessly. Never even shuts up. I’m not sure he knows how. I guess he’d be a boulder dropped into the river. His effect is grand and immediate. But maybe these words that I write could be ripples. Like a pound. Spreading out further than I can see. It’s a nice thought at least. But it really isn’t helping my social life.”

His finger wavered over the submit button. With a sigh, he clicked it and sent it out into the great void of the ECHOnet. It felt good to talk even if it was to the empty void that may or may not ever be read. Sometimes people commented on his personal posts. That always produced mixed results as his anxiety spiked before he even opened them to look. Sometimes it was good though. Just to know someone cared or felt the same. That he wasn’t as alone as he felt most days.

It at least had distracted him long enough that the long legged stranger had exited with his coffees in hand. Though as Janey weaved her way over to his table, Tim’s lips thinned into a tight line.

She popped a hip and leaned on hand on the table as she grinned down at him, “You know, you could come over and say hi. He’s super nice. I just know he’d like you,” her bubbly optimism knew no bounds.

“I don’t need you playing matchmaker again,” Tim’s long suffering sigh seemed to have little effect on her, “I’m fine.”

“You say that but you keep look-ing,” she singsonged as she turned back to the counter, “Come on Tim! I could set it all up with a double date with me and Athena. It’d be grand.”

Tim’s flat look had equally little effect on her cheer. As much as Tim respected Athena and generally got along with her, the woman was the opposite of a good time. Tim would rather go double with Nisha… but that would inevitably end in a threesome or stitches. Either way, at least it was a guaranteed memorable night. Tim couldn’t see a double date involving Athena end as anything other than awkward.

“I’ll pass, all the same.”

Janey just let out her exasperation in a drawn out breath that ended the second a customer approached. It was an out and Tim took it, turning once more to bears and quests for salvation.

*

It had come to a head after Dahl. After the vault. But it hadn’t started there.

It had started when Angle’s mom had died.

Tim was certain the marriage wouldn’t have lasted even if she’d lived. The writing had been on the wall. But after her death, Jack would hear no ill spoken of her. She became as much of an unspoken void as their mother had been. No pictures, no words. Any mention prompted rage.

But Jack had known he couldn’t be a dad. Not really. So he’d remarried almost right away. Some coworker at Hyperion, a scientist who was beyond brilliant. Her eyes sparkling with mad genius and her lips curving with sharp wit. She adopted Angel but she was never a mother. Jack was hardly a father. Tim tried to be an uncle but it wasn’t what the nine-year-old had needed. Grieving for a mother she wasn’t allowed to talk about. Hadn’t been enough. And Tim had never had the right words. What sort of would-be writer was he even? All his writing and drama classes for nothing. Tongue tied before this little girl with eyes that were too blue and aged too soon with her black hair in pigtails. Unable to explain when she asked him why her daddy didn’t love her anymore.

He hadn’t known how to tell her that they were all broken. The scars they carried that couldn’t be seen. To explain how deep the paranoia and fear of shadows went. How you just didn’t talk about such things. For all Tim’s soft expressions and gentle ways, the void in his heart was just as yawning and deep. His thoughts skittering away from facing the truth behind the reasons why. The whys that led him to cry into the fur of his cats as their purrs filled his room in the late night. The whys that led him to keep an empty bed even when he had offers to fill it. The whys that made his heart race at 3 am when a wood board creaked when he was half asleep. The way he just knew… knew to never talk about dead loved ones.

But how do you explain that to a nine-year-old?

Tim didn’t. He let her play with ‘Little Monster’ with his tabby brown fur and name the new black kitten ‘Sir Muffin Butt’. He told her that she was loved. That Jack and he both loved her. But it never seemed enough. He gave her books when words failed. Made sure she had as many novels as she did science books. It was all he could think to do.

And then the divorce. Losing custody of Angel.

Tim had thought he was going to lose Jack as well.

It had blindsided them both. The audacity of it. The bitch had stolen Angel. Claimed Jack was an unfit father. Maybe he was, but he was her father. They didn’t see Angel for years and Tim could see the way it ate Jack away inside. Not that his stubborn brother would ever say. Not when he could crush something instead of dealing with his emotions.

So he turned his mind to work. Locked his sights on a rival company. And proceeded to systematically crush them. Tim was swept along in his wake.

Once he’d been blissfully happy to point his gun and fire at whatever bandit camp he’d been sent to ‘liberate’ but it was getting harder and harder to justify under Jack’s new drive. The men that fell before him became better armed, the buildings making factories and warehouses. ATLAS painted on the sides of crates that they requisitioned. They were never official holdings. Never something Altas could openly admit to owning... at least not at the start of it all. But it was corporate verse corporate warfare none the less. In the wastes of the great Pandora Desert corporations had more legal power than any rag-tag government or bandit lord. And Hyperion was slowly but surely growing.

Jack hadn’t stopped until Altas was nothing but a desiccated corpse. Destroying their market value in every underhanded way imaginable. The once mighty industry titan a fading legacy that Hyperion sought to quickly overshadow. But even that hadn’t satisfied Jack. He’d itched for a new fight. Tim could see it in how he paced the office before the large glass window that Tim always tried desperately not to look at. Not to notice just how high they were as they overlooked the Elips Mountain Range. Focusing on Jack instead. The tightness of his eyes. The twitch in his foot. Spoiling for a fight like he had when they were ten and roaming the streets.

Only stealing some poor losers lunch money wasn’t enough anymore.

*

He’d just meant to check his email real quick but he was now on his seventh funny cat video. At this point, he might as well just give up and go home. He only came to the café so that he’d work. He never had the will to actually get any work done at home so he had to go to the café. But if he couldn’t focus it just set a bad pattern to sit here goofing off.

It really wasn’t like he needed money… he did a few odd jobs now and again. Some copy editing, some travel reviews. His blogs made some decent ad revenue most weeks. His savings was still flush for the lifestyle he lived. If he ever really needed anything he couldn’t afford Jack usually just bought it for him. And…

The days that words were too hard…

Tim was retired. Yet… and yet he still knew where they held the matches…

There were days that when he returned to the little café it was with scraped knuckles and colorful healing bruises marking his tan skin. And flush with enough credits and vigor to be overly generous in the bars for the next week. He’d never admit it, but he missed the danger of it all. Missed not having to think.

But not thinking was dangerous. His nightmares reminded him of that too often. His cold, empty house haunting as the thoughts refused to still. All the things he wished he’d questioned but hadn’t. Things he regretted but had done anyway. For the greater good. Because it was necessary. But he hadn’t made that call. Just bloodied the target as his strings were pulled. But that did nothing to stem the guilt.

He was a monster. But so were cats. Little horrible killing machines in cute packages. So he’d let the tears flow and held whichever little beast would stand him, listening to the rumbling purr until he ran out of tears.

It was fine.

He was fine.

*

It was only after Dahl. After the Vault. After the scar that had ended Tim’s ability to pass as Jack and thus the whole Handsome Jack charade itself that Tim finally snapped. Jack had gone too far too many times. The fights got worse. Fought over everything. Jack would scream and sneer and snap. Tim standing like a mute wall of stone, fists clenched, voice soft and clipped.

Sometimes it came to blows. It was hardly a new development. They’d punched and wrestled before they could walk. The one endless truth was that Jack always won. Always. Tim eventually falling under his blows and relenting.

Only this time, as knuckles collided with flesh, it was surreal. Tim’s mind detached, watching from outside himself. He wasn’t holding back. Not this time. Not pulling his punches. Jack folded under a blow to his stomach. His breath whooshing out to both their shock.

Of course, he would. Jack sat at a desk all day. Paced an office. Tim was front lines. Tim went to the gym when he wasn’t on a mission. Tim fought in the ring when he was bored. Tim was the one covered in more bullet scars than he could count.

He’d pinned Jack to the floor of the office. Both their breaths ragged as Jack stared up pensively at Tim. Mismatched eyes locked. Waiting. Tim struggled to place the look in Jack’s eyes… fear? Of him?

He could see it. Mirrored in Jack’s eyes. The moment that the core truth that had been the foundation of their lives since childhood crumbled. Tim was the one who was stronger. Tim had become the protector. Had been for over a decade. Had he always been? His mind reeled at scenes of their childhood took on a new light. Always at Jack’s back. Only had he been the hapless damsel Jack was protecting or… or the muscle that had Jack’s back? Had Jack ever gotten in fights when Tim hadn’t been there to back him up?

Tim felt dizzy. Drunk even. He wanted to throw up. Staggered to his feet, he pushed off of Jack. He had no words. But he was done. Done trying to be Jack. Done envying Jack. Because the truth was so painfully clear now.

Jack had always needed him more than he’d needed Jack.

Spinning on his heels, Timothy left. Left Jack shouting from the floor. Left Jack hurling insults. Left to the faint sounds of begging.

Had left to find out who Timothy Lawrence was for the first time in decades.

Tim wished he could say that he never looked back. That he never let Jack in again. But that would be a lie. In the end, he’d claimed it was for Angel’s sake. They were both too stubborn but they were each other’s only family. When Jack had called and asked if he was still coming to Angel’s birthday Tim had sighed and said, “Yeah, of course.”

A few years later Jack had shown up at his door unannounced. Tim had nearly slammed the door in Jack’s face until the magic words had been spoken, Jack’s lips pulled into something between joy and trepidation, “Grammy’s dead.”

They’d sat that at the edge of the desert passing a bottle of cheap whiskey back and forth. It was the kind from their childhood. The first they’d ever tasted before they were even legal. Jack said it still tasted like sadness and ash. They drank it anyway. Throwing the bottle off the side of the cliff when it was empty. Under the stars and the glow of the moon, they whispered remembered childhood tales. Their laughter growing as they lay shoulder to shoulder in the red sand.

As Jack’s voice kissed his ears on yet another drunken ramble of teenage antics, Tim pressed a hand over his aching chest. Heart tight. He’d missed this. Missed his brother. Had missed Jack long before he’d walked out of Hyperion for good.

Jack raised an eyebrow at him and Tim realized he’d been staring. He butted his head lightly against his twin’s, “You’re an idiot,” he slurred fondly.

Jack just snorted, “Whatever. You’re still a dork, dum-dum.”

But he didn’t move from where they lay, sharing each other’s breath. It was perfect.

The next week they were back at each other’s throats.

*

His ECHO beeped beside him and Tim took the excuse to break from his current round of writer's block. He slid the lock screen open, the home screen showed a picture of the last time the whole gang had been together. Nisha had her arms thrown around his and Jack’s shoulders, pulling the twins close. Tim’s freckled face was flush from beer and whatever Nisha had just said though he honestly couldn’t recall what it’d been. Jack leered at the photographer and Wilhelm loomed behind the group. Huge and imposing with his bulky frame and cybernetics.

It had been taken a few years before things had taken a worse turn. They’d been happy and carefree that night. A reunion tour of sorts. Drinking and fighting as if the years apart living separate lives had been only weeks. A night filled with laughter and blood and sex and drink.

Tim brushed the pad of his thumb over the picture fondly, his smile tinged with old heartache. Even in that photo, he could see the subtle signs in his old friend’s stance, the lines on Wil’s face that grew ever deeper as the withering disease ate him alive. The huge man had slowly wilted before them over the years as his muscles began failing him. With more money than sense, Jack paid for every surgery Wilhelm could want. Cutting bits off the huge man to restore his failing bulk. Some of the doctors argued that the cybernetics were at best prolonging the inevitable, others that they were actually making it worse. Those doctors didn’t last long.

Yet no matter how much money Jack threw at it. Wil slowly slipped further away each year. His arms shaking with even the effort it took to lift his bulky enhancements. So that year they made a plan.

Wilhelm had never wanted to go out with a whimper on a hospital bed too weak to even feed himself and none of them ever wanted to see their dear friend like that. That wasn’t Wil. So Jack paid for one last surgery. Their friend barely even looking like himself, more machine than man now. But that was fine. Wilhelm had always wanted to be a robot.

It was a setup from the start. Picking a random group of young treasure seekers to pick a fight with. A crashed train. A few well-placed threats and a promise of loot to be had.

Wilhelm had put up an epic show. Explosions had rocked the mountain range as he painted the snow red with bandit blood. Almost too well. He nearly won. And that would have defeated the whole point. This was his last blaze of glory. A warrior’s funeral of blood and death. To go out as a legend.

They’d watched through sniper rifles from the cliffs. Jack swearing beside him. Tim had felt the tension in Jack’s arms, his desire to pick off the Vault Hunter widdling away Wilhelm’s stamina growing palpable with every minute. Tim felt it too, but this is what they'd all agreed on. This is what Wil wanted. Nisha just laughed adding commentary and insults. Tim tried to blink away the tears enough to see it through to the end.

When Wilhelm finally sagged, dropping to his knees, the Vault Hunter did the unthinkable. They started to lower their gun in pity. So Tim took the shot for them. Wil died laughing. The sound echoing through the mountains and seeming to carry on long after the man had fallen, blood streaming into the snow. Neither Jack nor Nisha said anything as the tears streamed down Timothy’s face.

They gave chase of course. As the bandits fled. Swearing vengeance for Wilhelm’s death on every last one of the Vault Hunter’s crew. But only until they were sure the vermin had scampered. Then they returned to the body. To lay their dear friend to rest. And drank until they couldn’t see straight.

It had been the first time in ages that Tim had awoken to Jack curled in his arms. The snoring doing nothing to help the throbbing headache from his hangover. Nisha had helpfully taken pictures as Tim scowled up at her. Jack told everyone that saw the photo that Tim was a pathetic cuddler and he’d just been humoring him. No one would disagree openly but despite his Jack-like scowl no one who actually knew them ever mistook Tim’s face for Jack’s anymore. They hadn’t looked alike in years. Not since Elpis and the Vault.

Tim scuffed his callous fingers through the bread he’d grown to soften his ridiculous chin. That had helped too. He hardly looked a thing like Jack these days. Only their eyes gave him away and a pair of lightly tinted reading glasses that were perched on his nose helped soften the difference between his mismatched irises. Though, truth be told, even if he shaved he’d only pass as a Jack impersonator unless he was willing to slather on the five pounds of concealer and foundation Jack wore nowadays. Tim swore is twin wore as much makeup as Moxxi did albeit a more natural look than the famous nightclub entrepreneur. Jack’s face was poreless, contoured and sculpted perfection that no mere mortal could hope to obtain. And Tim just openly stared in horrified awe the first day he’d witnessed Jack’s morning makeup routine. Or he had until Jack threw a brush at him and slammed the door.

Vain and narcissistic asshole as always.

Not that Tim had any right to complain about anyone else's vanity when he continued his protein shakes and dawn run every day. Maintaining abs than where hardly needed when his only job was writing and he didn’t even have anyone but his cats back home to even look at them. But running and the gym were just part of his life. The time he didn’t have to spend thinking. A reminder of the more peaceful time in his life that hadn’t required thought of effort. Just physical motion.

Which was stupid that he still thought of it as ‘peaceful’ or ‘the good ol’ days’ considering it had mostly involved lots of bloodshed and killing.

But such was the stupid complexity of real life.

With a defeated groan Tim closed up his laptop for the day and packed up to head home to his cats. His writer's block would still be there tomorrow.

**Author's Note:**

> World building mostly complete! Next chapter won't be so flash back heavy. And I love Rhymothy so expect lots of that coming up. They are so cute together.


End file.
